Bengaluru-based Anuj Kushwaha was just another regular Joe - a young man working in the research and development department of a home-appliance maker.

The engineer in him wanted to build something, innovate a new product, but he found no support or an avenue to experiment. Kushwaha then heard about IKP-EDEN, a makerspace in Bengaluru’s Koramangala area. Makerspaces are tinkering labs that stock a wide variety of tools that people can use to build stuff. Sort of like a modern garage with high-end tools.

Soon enough, the BITS-Pilani graduate landed up at IKP-EDEN. His idea was to design a rack that would allow the elderly easy access to things without having to move, bend or stretch much. After a few months of tinkering, he has come up with a moveable rack. Kushwaha quit his job recently to concentrate on his product and establish a startup.

“My mom is old. I thought I should make something that is moveable. I went to Mahadevapura where a lot of workshops are there. But they do not allow you to use the machines. You have to give the job to them. When it comes to prototyping, they are not proactive,” said Kushwaha. “A guy needs space for prototyping... where you can experiment and make something.”

The genesis

Tinkering spaces such as Bengaluru-based Workbench Projects and IKP-EDEN, Mumbai-based Maker’s Asylum and a dozen others across the country have come up in the last three four years. A few factors contributed to this. Startup hubs such as Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi were developing a taste for innovation.

Globally, the so-called maker culture was heating up and Indians who had travelled abroad and witnessed the movement wanted to set up something similar here. Emerging technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT) were becoming big and several people sought avenues to experiment in these fields. The enthusiasm for the first few tinkering labs in the country inspired several others to set up similar spaces.

The idea was to set up spaces with a range of tools and promote an open culture that would encourage people to experiment and share ideas so they could build whatever they wanted to. These places initially attracted curious minds who wanted to build something for the pure joy of it but now also attract startups and people serious about innovating new products.

“Engineering students come for project completion. They need guidance, tools and machines. Second, people who have retired. They are a houseful of talent. They are high-resource people. Third, the full-time jobers trying to explore an alternative career. Fourth, those cannon balls who do not care whether there is Workbench Projects or not, they will still work. What makes them come here is they get to meet people,” said Anupama Gowda, cofounder of Workbench Projects.

There always has been an acute need for such spaces, just that something like this never came up because hardware experimentation always took a backseat or enthusiastic people figured a way to experiment with limited means.

“Before IKP or Workbench, there was a huge dearth. It was a typical problem that a growing hardware ecosystem faces. The makerspaces came at the right time,” said Nihal Kashinath, chief executive of Applied Singularity, a platform for IoT and artificial intelligence professionals that routinely engages with makerspaces. “Over the last year, there has been less of community activity (at makerspaces) and more serious work. Makerspaces have scaled and evolved to meet that as well.”

Allan Rodrigues, CEO of Maker’s Asylum, too, has felt the change. “More people are coming into the fold. People are coming in saying this is what we would like to build. Earlier, it was a few hobbyists. Now, people know what they want... and are going beyond the hobbyist-craft bit,” he said.

What's on offer?

For those seeking alternative careers, the proposition that the tinkering labs offer is too good to miss—a space to experiment without having to pay exorbitant rents, and the availability of all required tools, mentoring, and a community brimming with ideas. Good if your plan works, if not, you have learnt something new.

“Essentially, for a startup like me, in some regard, a social impact startup, I choose to be operationally lean. In that regard, it has been hugely beneficial to have such an open configurable space. At the same time, they have specialties like the laser cutter and resources as well as extremely resourceful people. It’s the space, the environment, the resource and the people,” said Arun Cherian, founder of Rise Legs, which makes cost-effective, lightweight, elastic, cane-based prosthetic legs.

Cherian quit his PhD in mechanical engineering at Purdue University in the United States to develop Rise Legs. Previously, he had been a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, developing exoskeletal suits to help paralyzed people walk.

For Nishant Ranjan, cofounder of Zeuva Technologies, which is building an electric vehicle, taking up office space at Maker’s Asylum was only logical. “The co-working spaces that have popped up are good for software startups but not for hardware startups. We needed to park a motorcycle somewhere.

(Also, at makerspaces) you also get introduced to new ways of doing things,” said Ranjan, who picked up technology tips from a senior executive he met at the makerspace.

“There was a woman who was a senior leader in a design software company. She started talking about how we could improve our development process. It gave an idea about new tech.”

Mentorship at makerspaces is based on open collaboration. You ask for help, you get it. “If there is anything you want it is one call away. It is just the network. People land up to help, be it paid or unpaid,” said Gowda of Workbench Projects. “We have had mentors come from the Indian Institute of Science, fabricators from KR Market, and neuroscience scientists from (the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences) willing to give their time.”

Inspiring Gen-Next

The tinkering spaces also support futuristic ideas, pushing the bracket in terms of innovation. Next week, Workbench Projects will house around 80 students who will be building the OrcaPod, a pod prototype that can potentially reach speeds up to 460 kmph.

Hyperloop India is a team of students from BITS-Pilani, the Indian School of Business, IIM-Ahmedabad and the National Institute of Design. The team’s OrcaPod has been selected for the final stage of Elon Musk’s SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Design Competition. The team, to be mentored at Workbench Projects, will have to submit a preliminary design and its pod will be raced inside a mile-long vacuum tube built by SpaceX at Hawthorne in California.

“The design phase is done and the next most difficult phase is the manufacturing stage. The problem with colleges in India is that they are not equipped with the entire infrastructure to compete with all these graduate teams abroad. We are competing with teams from Princeton, MIT and all these colleges have the right infrastructure to teach their students how to manufacture,” said Sibesh Kar, team lead of Hyperloop India.

Kar did a lot of research before zeroing in on Workbench Projects. “These guys (cofounder Pavan Kumar and team) were equally enthusiastic about what we are trying to do and they realized the potential of students.”

Workbench Projects supporting Kar and team is a classic example of such spaces trying to get in the upcoming generation into the maker’s fold.

“I think parents have gotten a lot more involved. We run a rapid prototyping workshop that stretches over four weekends, where we train people on using tools. For every monthly workshop we have parents coming to enroll kids,” said Rodrigues of Maker’s Asylum. “Toolkits are kid-friendly now. Kids are exposed to these and are already building robots.”

The government, too, is convinced about the need for including product-building in the school curriculum. “The Niti Aayog has come up with Atal Tinkering Laboratories where students are getting introduced to all of this.

The idea is to make India a hardware product creation country, not simply a software country,” said Vikraman Venu Saranyan, Vice President of Hyderabad-based IKP Knowledge Park, which runs IKP-EDEN. Workbench Projects also offers internships to students.

What does the future hold?

Makerspaces are evolving to be testing and incubation platforms for new experiments. From setting up tools for experimenting across more domains to bringing in inclusive innovation, they are trying them all.

At IKP-EDEN, Saranyan is setting up more labs to bring in crossfunctional capabilities. “We are setting up a chemistry and biotech lab within our space. We are also setting up an advanced machining and tooling section. You want to do material science, new polymers, fluidics, you should be able to do that,” he said.

At the end of the day, the idea is to support ‘ideas’, be it a startup’s or an enthusiast’s.

“We need facilities for hardware (making). Successful or not, it is like an art form; it a human trying to express himself/herself to do something. Getting an opportunity to express itself is a great help,” said Abdul Thameem, who is building a portable, onshore clean ocean energy extractor for the fishing community and commercial establishments along the seashores. Thameem developed his prototypes at both Workbench Projects and IKP-EDEN.